Page:Nietzsche the thinker.djvu/451

Rh reactionary; but his ideal, whatever may be the practical difficulties of turning it into a working program, is plain—a superior, and more or less self-perpetuating class of men on the one hand, and on the other, free entrance to it and descent from it.

And now as to the place and function of the third class—the great working mass. Nietzsche sometimes speaks contemptuously of the average man, but he does so relatively, not absolutely, and perhaps the language would never have been used save in reaction against the excessive laudation of the common man and his virtues which is characteristic of a democratic age. undefined However this may be, he betrays here and there full appreciation of the services of the common man, and sometimes gives set expression to it—enough so to lead us to suspect that, if he had lived to complete the work on which he was bent in his later years, he would have supplemented his doctrine of the higher man, which was doubtless his main concern, with some adequate exposition of the place and functions of the average worker in society. undefined He particularly says that this third class, equally with the first and second, has its field of labor and its peculiar feeling of perfection and mastership. Work well done, of whatever kind, always has his admiration. A good hand-worker or scholar who has pride in his art and looks out on life with easy contentment is a pleasing sight to him, while he finds it pitiable when a shoemaker or schoolmaster gives us to understand with a suffering mien that he really was born for something better. "There is absolutely nothing better than the good! and that means having some kind of proficiency and creating from it virtù in the Italian Renaissance sense." Industry, order, moderation, settled convictions—these bring the average man to his type of "perfection." Repeatedly does Nietzsche warn against contempt for him. "Let us not undervalue the prerogatives (Vorrechte) of the average" [he had just been saying that every class had its prerogative]. "It